It is good to see Putin and Trump meet. Between our two countries, we have 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons; it is best we get along. An isolated and angry Russia would not be good for the rest of the world.
Obama or Hillary would have gotten another Nobel Peace Prize for meeting with North Korea and Russia this soon in their presidency but, according to the press, Trump doing it is the worst thing to happen to international relations—ever.
Obama was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize just for showing up to work. Just weeks after invading Crimea, Putin was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, of course, both have one. Hitler was nominated for one in 1939 but didn't win. He blamed it on the Jews.
I'd like to have seen the faces of the Nobel Peace Prize judges when Putin didn’t win and KGB officers asked for their names, addresses and brief descriptions of their cars.
As we know, Nobel prizes are only for Democrats. Reagan brought world peace without firing a shot by bringing down the Berlin Wall, and he didn’t even get a Daytime Emmy. Joe Biden was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for helping Sino/American relations by having a nice conversation about China with the help at a New Jersey Panda Express.
Socialists and communists (a.k.a. the media) and their benefactors in the Democrat Party suddenly are Cold War warriors and are taking a hard line against Russia. They point to the corrupt KGB’s bullying tactics in framing political opponents. Have they been watching Comey/Strzok/McCabe/Page/Orr/Rosenstein’s FBI? We did the same thing under Obama.
NSA spy (which Obama officials Brennan and Clapper lied about) and whistle-blower Edward Snowden feels safer in Russia than in the U.S. That’s telling.
For two years, Putin played chess while Obama was playing checkers. It has been said that negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with pigeons. They fly in with great ceremony but won't make a move when it's their turn. Then they leave, come back and knock over all the pieces, mess on the chess board, and strut around like they won. Trump is different. He was in Helsinki to do a deal.
In my award-eligible column, “Putin, and Blaming Others,” I explored Obama’s feckless relationship with Putin. Putin just went in and took Crimea under Obama, whose only reaction was a sternly-written UN letter. Putin’s response to Obama: "Crimea a river."
Russia caught Obama off guard. Prior to the invasion of Crimea, in Obama's mind our nation's biggest threats were the Koch brothers, the Tea Party and health care providers. Obama famously laughed at Mitt Romney when he said “Russia was our biggest geo-political threat.”
To be fair, Putin did allow Crimeans to vote to join Russia. The ballot only had an "Opt-in: Yes" block; there was no option to vote "No." Putin got the idea from the Facebook "User Agreement."
Trump said a few positive things about Putin, and the Obama FBI and DOJ manufactured the DNC’s fake Steele Dossier into an investigation.
To Trump’s point, we should listen to the clairvoyant Putin; he can predict with 100% certainty which of his political opponents will "kill themselves" in the coming weeks. And Putin is putting a happy face on Russian tourism. Their new slogan: “Visit Russia before Russia visits you.”
We have issues with Putin. His human rights record is bad. He even purged gays from Russia, once saying Russia now has none. Then there were those tacky Russian warm-up suits their Olympians wore in the opening ceremony when Russia hosted the Olympics in Sochi. They looked like a gaudy 1980s disco design. I am just glad there were no gays there to see them.
So maybe Trump could have backed our intelligence agencies better against Putin. These are the same ones who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (price tag $2 trillion in a worthless war), and went after Trump with the fake collusion investigation. So I get why he is careful. One think tank says that the U.S. meddled in 89 elections (remember Obama getting involved in Israel’s election to defeat Netanyahu?), and other countries meddled in 32 of ours.
If Muehler’s investigation concludes anything, it will be that the DNC colluded to help Trump win by nominating Hillary Clinton.
Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Trump—and Putin in a Small Room